A new film pro­gramme chal­lenges per­cep­tions of fat bodies

When I was grow­ing up in the late 1990s and ear­ly ​’00s, fat peo­ple were always the butt of the joke. Pop cul­ture pre­sent­ed the likes of Homer Simp­son and Peter Grif­fin as rotund buf­foons, lazy and food-obsessed, while rom-coms like Shal­low Hal made a whole song and dance out of how hilar­i­ous it was that an obese ver­sion of Gwyneth Pal­trow should be wor­thy of love. Shows in which fat peo­ple were berat­ed by dieti­cians until they con­sumed a bit of broc­coli and a diet shake were all the rage, and I was taught that my body was a source of shame, to be cov­ered up and reviled at all costs.

Thank­ful­ly, per­cep­tions are start­ing to change, and fat char­ac­ters aren’t rel­e­gat­ed to the role of com­ic relief or vil­lain any­more (though Ursu­la remains an icon of fat rep­re­sen­ta­tion, regard­less of Disney’s inten­tion). In 2019, fat megas­tar Liz­zo appeared in Lorene Scafaria’s Hus­tlers, putting to bed once and for all any claim you can’t be fat and hot as hell. As part of the Barbican’s Emerg­ing Film Cura­tors’ Lab, pro­gram­mer Grace Bar­ber-Plen­tie is cham­pi­oning fat bod­ies on screen with a spe­cial event tak­ing place this Sat­ur­day (5 Decem­ber) which seeks to show lived expe­ri­ence of being fat in a world where we are taught big isn’t beautiful.

Through a series of sev­en shorts, Refram­ing the Fat Body cel­e­brates the diver­si­ty of fat lives, whether it’s plus size pole dancers or a young woman strug­gling through weight loss camp. The Fat Feel­ing, mod­el and activist Talia A Dar­ling invites mod­els to a pho­to­shoot where they dis­cuss their expe­ri­ences of being fat in the UK, while Aqua­porko! is the sto­ry of Australia’s first fat femme syn­chro­nised swim­ming team.

Bar­ber-Plen­tie, who also runs the Insta­gram project Fat in Film, has put a lot of thought and care into plan­ning the event, which also fea­tures a vir­tu­al pole dance per­for­mance from Roz Mays. The event is now sold out, but you can read up on the films on the Bar­bi­can web­site, and here’s more from Grace on why she decid­ed to spot­light fat bodies.

LWLies: What was the moti­va­tion for pro­gram­ming this season?

Bar­ber-Plen­tie: The brief for the Emerg­ing Cura­tors lab at Bar­bi­can was ​‘Inside Out’, and I knew straight away that look­ing at fat­ness would fit in with this. I want­ed to look at what it’s like to both inhab­it a fat body [inside] and how fat bod­ies are per­ceived in the world [out], so it was all a very hap­py coincidence!

But, aside from that, I’ve been think­ing about fat­ness and film for a while now – both what film is like in terms of fat rep­re­sen­ta­tion, and what it’s like to work in/​attend cin­e­mat­ic spaces as a fat per­son. I went to an amaz­ing event that Fringe! Fes­ti­val host­ed last year, a screen­ing of Kel­li Jean Drinkwater’s Noth­ing to Lose with shorts and a pan­el. It felt like a gen­uine­ly inclu­sive space in every way and I want­ed to help encour­age more spaces like that in film.

How easy did you find it to select a broad range of films that deal with fatness?

I actu­al­ly applied for anoth­er pro­gram­ming oppor­tu­ni­ty last year look­ing at the same themes, but on a much larg­er scale. So I ini­tial­ly went back to a list I pre­pared for that, which includ­ed a lot of main­stream films like any­thing with Melis­sa McCarthy and Rebel Wil­son in, down to some real­ly inter­est­ing shorts I man­aged to read about online. From there, I basi­cal­ly did a lot of googling. I think I have now used every pos­si­ble com­bi­na­tion of words to find films about fatness.

It feels like some­thing main­stream cin­e­ma is still very reluc­tant to show. Do you recall the first time you saw fat­ness por­trayed on screen in a pos­i­tive light?

The key film for me was the 2007 remake of Hair­spray. I was a musi­cal the­atre kid and my mum’s friend used to bring me back boot­leg CDs of sound­tracks to Broad­way shows when I was 11 or so. I learned all the words to the Hair­spray sound­track and was already obsessed with it by the time I saw it as a kid. But it was still such a pleas­ant sur­prise to see Tra­cy Turn­blad as a char­ac­ter who likes the way she looks from the begin­ning of the film. There’s no jour­ney of self-dis­cov­ery for her, her goal is to be a dancer and the film is about her get­ting it.

It feels like short films are lead­ing the way in terms of rep­re­sent­ing fat bodies.

Short films def­i­nite­ly offer more vari­ety. For exam­ple, every film in this pro­gramme offers a real dif­fer­ent range of expe­ri­ences and iden­ti­ties. I ini­tial­ly want­ed this pro­gramme to focus sole­ly on fat femme bod­ies, but I realised that it felt much more excit­ing to open up that focus to show how well short films are doing the work when it comes to fatness.

Was there any­thing that sur­prised you while research­ing and select­ing the films for this season?

I wasn’t sur­prised so much as I was frus­trat­ed when look­ing at lists of ​‘The Best Fat Films’ and ​‘Top Fat Actors’ – the same names and films kept com­ing up time and time again. I know it’s easy to put Hair­spray and Brides­maids on a list because they’re huge­ly pop­u­lar films, but it doesn’t take long to research a film that’s a bit less well-known, like Dee Rees’ Bessie which fea­tures Queen Lat­i­fah and Monique as ful­ly-realised fat black queer women. I think we def­i­nite­ly need to work on diver­si­ty with­in fat rep­re­sen­ta­tion, but hope­ful­ly once we start see­ing the rep­re­sen­ta­tion itself, that will get easier.

What are your hopes for the future of fat rep­re­sen­ta­tion in cinema?

I want us to prop­er­ly archive the past and the his­to­ry of fat­ness in cin­e­ma. I am by no means a his­to­ri­an, but I’m try­ing to do that with my Insta­gram page ded­i­cat­ed to fat­ness in film and I hope that more research can be done into this sub­ject. And I hope that the fat stars we cur­rent­ly have will keep work­ing, and have long and rich careers in a vari­ety of roles. Let’s just get Bri­an Tyree Hen­ry into every sin­gle film so I can stop annoy­ing every­one on social media by going on about him all the time!

Refram­ing the Fat Body takes place at the Bar­bi­can on Sat­ur­day 5 December.